PS 
3503 
U85 
T53 


THAT 
PUP 


ELLIS 
PARKER, 

BUTL'ER 

AUTHOR  OFffPIGS  IS  PIGS' 

V^*—  •»•»••»"  it  in  II  in  II  III  I  Illl 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

DAVIS 

GIFT  OF 

THE  PIERCE  FAMILY 


THAT  PUP 


Fluff  was  such  a  sweet  little  thing 


THAT    PUP 

BY 
ELLIS    PARKER   BUTLER 

AUTHOB  OF  PIGS  IS  PIGS,   KILO,   ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 

THE  McCLURE  COMPANY 
MCMVHI 


LIBRARY 


Copyright,  1908,  by  The  McClure  Company 


Copyright,  1905,  by  The  American  Magazine 
Copyright,  1908,  by  Harper  Brothers 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Fluff  was  such  a  sweet  little  thing         Frontispiece 

Facing 
page 

They  held  a  sort  of  a  jubilee  10 

He  came  back  all  right,  three  weeks  later  14 

He  tried  to  show  me  Fluff  that  day  26 

He  would  cling  to  that  note  30 

He  took  the  hydrant  and  the  pipe 

with  him  38 

The  dog  is  on  your  own  property  46 

How  far  would  he  travel  at  the  sight 

of  two  guns?  54 


THAT   PUP 


I 

THE   EDUCATION   OF   FLUFF 

Murchison,  who  lives  next  door  to  me,  wants 
to  get  rid  of  a  dog,  and  if  you  know  of  anyone 
who  wants  a  dog  I  wish  you  would  let  Mur- 
chison know.  Murchison  doesn't  need  it.  He  is 
tired  of  dogs,  anyway.  That  is  just  like  Mur- 
chison. 'Way  up  in  an  enthusiasm  one  day  and 
sick  of  it  the  next. 

Brownlee — Brownlee  lives  on  the  other  side 
of  Murchison — remembers  when  Murchison  got 
the  dog.  It  was  the  queerest  thing,  so  Murchi- 
son says,  you  ever  heard  of.  Here  came  the 
express  wagon — Adams'  Express  Company's 
wagon — and  delivered  the  dog.  The  name  was 
all  right—"  C.  P.  Murchison,  Gallatin,  Iowa  " 
— and  the  charges  were  paid.  The  charges  were 
$2.80,  and  paid,  and  the  dog  had  been  shipped 
from  New  York.  Think  of  that!  Twelve  hun- 


4  THAT    PUP 

dred  miles  in  a  box,  with  a  can  of  condensed 
milk  tied  to  the  box  and  "  Please  feed  "  writ- 
ten on  it. 

When  Murchison  came  home  to  dinner,  there 
was  the  dog.  At  first  Murchison  was  pleased; 
then  he  was  surprised ;  then  he  was  worried.  He 
hadn't  ordered  a  dog.  The  more  he  thought 
about  it  the  more  he  worried. 

"  If  I  could  just  think  who  sent  it,"  he  said 
to  Brownlee,  "  then  I  would  know  who  sent  it; 
but  I  can't  think.  It  is  evidently  a  valuable 
dog.  I  can  see  that.  People  don't  send  cheap, 
inferior  dogs  twelve  hundred  miles.  But  I  can't 
think  who  sent  it." 

*  What  worries  me,"  he  said  to  Brownlee 
another  time,  "  is  who  sent  it.  I  can't  imagine 
who  would  send  me  a  dog  from  New  York. 
I  know  so  many  people,  and,  like  as  not,  some 
influential  friend  of  mine  has  meant  to  make 
me  a  nice  present,  and  now  he  is  probably  mad 
because  I  haven't  acknowledged  it.  I'd  like  to 
know  what  he  thinks  of  me  about  now !  " 

It  almost  worried  him  sick.  Murchison  never 


THE    EDUCATION    OF   FLUFF    5 

did  care  for  dogs,  but  when  a  man  is  presented 
with  a  valuable  dog,  all  the  way  from  New 
York,  with  $2.80  charges  paid,  he  simply  has 
to  admire  that  dog.  So  Murchison  got  into 
the  habit  of  admiring  the  dog,  and  so  did  Mrs. 
Murchison.  From  what  they  tell  me,  it  was 
rather  a  nice  dog  in  its  infancy,  for  it  was  only 
a  pup  then.  Infant  dogs  have  a  habit  of  being 
pups. 

As  near  as  I  could  gather  from  what  Mur- 
chison and  Mrs.  Murchison  told  me,  it  was  a 
little,  fluffy,  yellow  ball,  with  bright  eyes  and 
ever-moving  tail.  It  was  the  kind  of  a  dog  that 
bounces  around  like  a  rubber  ball,  and  eats  the 
evening  newspaper,  and  rolls  down  the  porch 
steps  with  short,  little  squawks  of  surprise,  and 
lies  down  on  its  back  with  its  four  legs  in  the 
air  whenever  a  bigger  dog  comes  near.  In  color 
it  was  something  like  a  camel,  but  a  little  red- 
der where  the  hair  was  long,  and  its  hair  was 
like  beaver  fur — soft  and  woolly  inside,  with  a 
few  long  hairs  that  were  not  so  soft.  It  was  so 
little  and  fluffy  that  Mrs.  Murchison  called  it 


6  rTHAT    PUP 

Fluff.  Pretty  name  for  a  soft,  little  dog  is 
Fluff. 

"  If  I  only  knew  who  sent  that  dog,"  Mur- 
chison  used  to  say  to  Brownlee,  "  I  would  like 
to  make  some  return.  I'd  send  him  a  barrel  of 
my  best  melons,  express  paid,  if  it  cost  me  five 
dollars!" 

Murchison  was  in  the  produce  business,  and 
he  knew  all  about  melons,  but  not  so  much 
about  dogs.  Of  course  he  could  tell  a  dog 
from  a  cat,  and  a  few  things  of  that  sort,  but 
Brownlee  was  the  real  dog  man.  Brownlee  had 
two  Irish  pointers  or  setters — I  forget  which 
they  were ;  the  black  dogs  with  the  long,  floppy 
ears.  I  don't  know  much  about  dogs  myself. 
I  hate  dogs. 

Brownlee  knows  a  great  deal  about  dogs.  He 
isn't  one  of  the  book-taught  sort;  he  knows 
dogs  by  instinct.  As  soon  as  he  sees  a  dog  he 
can  make  a  guess  at  its  breed,  and  out  our 
way  that  is  a  pretty  good  test,  for  Gallatin 
dogs  are  rather  cosmopolitan.  That  is  what 
makes  good  stock  in  men — Scotch  grandmother 


THE    EDUCATION   OF   FLUFF   7 

and  German  grandfather  on  one  side  and  Eng- 
lish grandmother  and  Swedish  grandfather  on 
the  other — and  I  don't  see  why  the  same  isn't 
true  of  dogs.  There  are  numbers  of  dogs  in 
Gallatin  that  can  trace  their  ancestry  through 
nearly  every  breed  of  dog  that  ever  lived,  and 
Brownlee  can  look  at  any  one  of  them  and 
immediately  guess  at  its  formula — one  part 
Spitz,  three  parts  greyhound,  two  parts  collie, 
and  so  on.  I  have  heard  him  guess  more  kinds 
of  dog  than  I  ever  knew  existed. 

As  soon  as  he  saw  Murchison's  dog  he 
guessed  it  was  a  pure  bred  Shepherd  with  a 
trace  of  Eskimo.  Massett,  who  thinks  he  knows 
as  much  about  dogs  as  Brownlee  does,  didn't 
believe  it.  The  moment  he  saw  the  pup  he  said 
it  was  a  pedigree  dog,  half  St.  Bernard  and 
half  Spitz. 

Brownlee  and  Massett  used  to  sit  on  Mur- 
chison's  steps  after  supper  and  point  out  the 
proofs  to  each  other.  They  would  argue  for 
hours. 

"  All  right,  Massett,"  Brownlee  would  say, 


8  THAT    PUP 

"but  you  can't  fool  me\  Look  at  that  nose! 
If  that  isn't  a  Shepherd  nose,  I'll  eat  it.  And 
see  that  tail!  Did  you  ever  see  a  tail  like  that 
on  a  Spitz?  That  is  an  Eskimo  tail  as  sure  as 
I  am  a  foot  high." 

"Tail  fiddlesticks!"  Massett  would  reply. 
'  You  can't  tell  anything  by  a  pup's  tail.  Look 
at  his  ears!  There  is  St.  Bernard  for  you!  And 
see  his  lower  jaw.  Isn't  that  Spitz?  I'll  leave 
it  to  Murchison.  Isn't  that  lower  jaw  Spitz, 
Murchison?  " 

Then  all  three  would  tackle  the  puppy  and 
open  its  mouth  and  feel  its  jaw,  and  the  pup 
would  wriggle  and  squeak,  and  back  away, 
opening  and  shutting  its  mouth  to  see  if  its 
works  had  been  damaged. 

"All  right!"  Brownlee  would  say.  "You 
wait  a  year  or  two  and  you'll  see ! " 

About  three  months  later  the  pup  was  as 
big  as  an  ordinary  full-grown  dog,  and  his  coat 
looked  like  a  compromise  between  a  calfskin 
and  one  of  these  hairbrush  door  mats  you  use 
to  wipe  your  feet  on  in  muddy  weather.  He 


THE    EDUCATION    OF    FLUFF   9 

did  not  look  like  the  same  pup.  He  was  long 
limbed  and  awkward  and  useless,  and  homely 
as  a  shopworn  fifty-cent  yellow  plush  mani- 
cure set.  Murchison  began  to  feel  that  he  didn't 
really  need  a  dog,  but  Brownlee  was  as  en- 
thusiastic as  ever.  He  would  go  over  to  Mur- 
chison's  fairly  oozing  dog  knowledge. 

"I'll  tell  you  what  that  dog  is,"  he  would 
say.  "  That  dog  is  a  cross  between  a  Great 
Dane  and  an  English  Deerhound.  You've  got 
a  very  valuable  dog  there,  Murchison,  a  very 
valuable  dog.  He  comes  of  fine  stock  on  both 
sides,  and  it  is  a  cross  you  don't  often  see.  I 
never  saw  it,  and  I've  seen  all  kinds  of  crossed 
dogs." 

Then  Massett  would  drop  in  and  walk 
around  the  dog  admiringly  for  a  few  minutes 
and  absorb  his  beauties. 

"  Murchison,"  he  would  say,  "  do  you  know 
what  that  dog  is?  That  dog  is  a  pure  cross 
between  a  Siberian  wolfhound  and  a  New- 
foundland. You  treat  that  dog  right  and  you'll 
have  a  fortune  in  him.  Why,  a  pure  Siberian 


10  THAT    PUP 

wolfhound  is  worth  a  thousand  dollars,  and  a 
good — a  really  good  Newfoundland,  mind  you 
— is  worth  two  thousand,  and  you've  got  both 
in  one  dog.  That's  three  thousand  dollars' 
worth  of  dog!" 

In  the  next  six  months  Fluff  grew.  He 
broadened  out  and  lengthened  and  heightened, 
and  every  day  or  two  Brownlee  or  Massett 
would  discover  a  new  strain  of  dog  in  him. 
They  pointed  out  to  Murchison  all  the  marks 
by  which  he  could  tell  the  different  kinds  of 
dog  that  were  combined  in  Fluff,  and  every 
time  they  discovered  a  new  one  they  held  a 
sort  of  jubilee,  and  bragged  and  swelled  their 
chests.  They  seemed  to  spend  all  their  time 
thinking  up  odd  and  strange  kinds  of  dog  that 
Fluff  had  in  him.  Brownlee  discovered  the 
traces  of  Cuban  bloodhound,  Kamtchatka 
hound,  beagle,  Brague  de  Bengale,  and  Thi- 
bet mastiff,  but  Massett  first  traced  the  stag- 
hound,  Turkoman  watchdog,  Dachshund,  and 
Harrier  in  him. 

Murchison,  not  being  a  doggish  man,  never 


Iran 


fl 


held  a  sort  of  a  jubilee 


THE    EDUCATION    OF    FLUFF  11 

claimed  to  have  noticed  any  of  these  family 
resemblances,  and  never  said  what  he  thought 
the  dog  really  was  until  a  month  or  two  later, 
when  he  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  the  dog 
was  a  cross  between  a  wolf,  a  Shetland  pony, 
and  hyena.  It  was  about  that  time  that  Fluff 
had  to  be  chained.  He  had  begun  to  eat  other 
dogs,  and  children  and  chickens.  The  first  night 
Murchison  chained  him  to  his  kennel  Fluff 
walked  half  a  mile,  taking  the  kennel  along, 
and  then  only  stopped  because  the  kennel  got 
tangled  with  a  lamp-post.  The  man  who 
brought  him  home  claimed  that  Fluff  was 
nearly  asphyxiated  when  he  found  him;  said 
he  gnawed  half  through  the  lamp -post,  and 
that  gas  got  in  his  lungs,  but  this  was  not 
true.  Murchison  learned  afterwards  that  it  was 
only  a  gasoline  lamp-post,  and  a  wooden  one. 
"  If  there  were  only  some  stags  around  this 
part  of  the  country,"  said  Massett,  "  the  stag- 
hound  strain  in  that  dog  would  be  mighty  valu- 
able. You  could  rent  him  out  to  everybody 
who  wanted  to  go  stag -hunting ;  and  you'd 


12  THAT    PUP 

have  a  regular  monopoly,  because  he's  the  only 
staghound  in  this  part  of  the  country.  And 
stag  hunting  would  be  popular,  too,  out  here, 
because  there  are  no  game  laws  that  interfere 
with  stag  hunting  in  this  State.  There  is  no 
closed  season.  People  could  hunt  stags  all  the 
year  round,  and  you'd  have  that  dog  busy 
every  day  of  the  year." 

"  Yes!  "  sneered  Brownlee,  "  only  there  are 
no  stags.  And  he  hasn't  any  staghound  blood 
in  him.  Pity  there  are  no  Dachs  in  this  State, 
too,  isn't  it?  Then  Murchison  could  hire  his  dog 
at  night,  too.  They  hunt  Dachs  at  night,  don't 
they,  Massett?  Only  there  is  no  Dachshund 
blood  in  him,  either.  If  there  was,  and  if  there 
were  a  few  Dachs " 

Massett  was  mad. 

"Yes!"  he  cried.  "And  you,  with  your 
Cuban  bloodhound  strain!  I  suppose  if  it  was 
the  open  season  for  Cubans,  you'd  go  out  with 
the  dog  and  tree  a  few!  Or  put  on  snowshoes 
and  follow  the  Kamtchat  to  his  icy  lair! " 

Brownlee  doesn't  get  mad  easily. 


THE    EDUCATION    OF    FLUFF  13 

"  Murchison,"  he  said,  "  leaving  out  Mas- 
sett's  dreary  nonsense  about  staghounds,  I  can 
tell  you  that  dog  would  make  the  finest  duck 
dog  in  the  State.  He's  got  all  the  points  for 
a  good  duck  dog,  and  I  ought  to  know  for  I 
have  two  of  the  best  duck  dogs  that  ever  lived. 
All  he  needs  is  training.  If  you  will  train  him 
right  you'll  have  a  mighty  valuable  dog." 

"  But  I  don't  hunt  ducks,"  said  Murchison, 
"  and  I  don't  know  how  to  train  even  a  lap- 
dog." 

"  You  let  me  attend  to  his  education,"  said 
Brownlee.  "  I  just  want  to  show  Massett  here 
that  I  know  a  dog  when  I  see  one.  I'll  show 
Massett  the  finest  duck  dog  he  ever  saw  when 
I  get  through  with  Fluff." 

So  he  went  over  and  got  his  shotgun,  just 
to  give  Fluff  his  first  lesson.  The  first  thing  a 
duck  dog  must  learn  is  not  to  be  afraid  of  a 
gun,  and  Brownlee  said  that  if  a  dog  first 
learned  about  guns  right  at  his  home  he  was 
not  so  apt  to  be  afraid  of  them.  He  said  that 
if  a  dog  heard  a  gun  for  the  first  time  when 


14  THAT    PUP 

he  was  away  from  home  and  in  strange  sur- 
roundings he  was  quite  right  to  be  surprised 
and  startled,  but  if  he  heard  it  in  the  bosom 
of  his  family,  with  all  his  friends  calmly  seated 
about,  he  would  think  it  was  a  natural  thing, 
and  accept  it  as  such. 

So  Brownlee  put  a  shell  in  his  gun  and  Mas- 
sett  and  Murchison  sat  on  the  porch  steps  and 
pretended  to  be  uninterested  and  normal,  and 
Brownlee  stood  up  and  aimed  the  gun  in  the 
air.  Fluff  was  eating  a  bone,  but  Brownlee 
spoke  to  him  and  he  looked  up,  and  Brownlee 
pulled  the  trigger.  It  seemed  about  five  min- 
utes before  Fluff  struck  the  ground,  he  jumped 
so  high  when  the  gun  was  fired,  and  then  he 
started  north  by  northeast  at  about  sixty  miles 
an  hour.  He  came  back  all  right,  three  weeks 
later,  but  his  tail  was  still  between  his  legs. 

Brownlee  didn't  feel  the  least  discouraged. 
He  said  he  saw  now  that  the  whole  principle 
of  what  he  had  done  was  wrong;  that  no  dog 
with  any  brains  whatever  could  be  anything 
but  frightened  to  hear  a  gun  shot  off  right 


came;  6ac&  a//  n'r/iZ, 


later 


THE    EDUCATION   OF   FLUFF  15 

in  the  bosom  of  his  family.  That  was  no  place 
to  fire  a  gun.  He  said  Fluff  evidently  thought 
the  whole  lot  of  us  were  crazy,  and  ran  in  fear 
of  his  life,  thinking  we  were  insane  and  might 
shoot  him  next.  He  said  the  thing  to  do  was 
to  take  the  shotgun  into  its  natural  surround- 
ings and  let  Fluff  learn  to  love  it  there.  He 
pictured  Fluff  enjoying  the  sound  of  the  gun 
when  he  heard  it  at  the  edge  of  the  lake. 

Murchison  never  hunted  ducks,  but  as  Fluff 
was  his  dog,  he  went  with  Brownlee,  and  of 
course  Massett  went.  Massett  wanted  to  see 
the  failure.  He  said  he  wished  stags  were  as 
plentiful  as  ducks,  and  he  would  show  Brown- 
lee! 

Fluff  was  a  strong  dog — he  seemed  to  have 
a  strain  of  ox  in  him,  so  far  as  strength  went 
— and  as  long  as  he  saw  the  gun  he  insisted 
that  he  would  stay  at  home ;  but  when  Brown- 
lee  wrapped  the  gun  in  brown  paper  so  it 
looked  like  a  big  parcel  from  the  meat  shop, 
the  horse  that  they  had  hitched  to  the  buck- 
board  was  able  to  drag  Fluff  along  without 


16  THAT    PUP 

straining  itself.  Fluff  was  fastened  to  the  rear 
axle  with  a  chain. 

When  they  reached  Duck  Lake,  Brownlee 
untied  Fluff  and  patted  him,  and  then  un- 
wrapped the  gun.  Fluff  gave  one  pained 
glance  and  made  the  six-mile  run  home  in 
seven  minutes  without  stopping.  He  was  home 
before  Brownlee  could  think  of  anything  to 
say,  and  he  went  so  far  into  his  kennel  that 
Murchison  had  to  take  off  the  boards  at  the 
back  to  find  him  that  night. 

'  That's  nothing,"  was  what  Brownlee  said 
when  he  did  speak ;  "  young  dogs  are  often 
that  way.  Gun  fright.  They  have  to  be  gun 
broken.  You  come  out  to-morrow,  and  I'll 
show  you  how  a  man  who  really  knows  how 
to  handle  a  dog  does  the  trick." 

The  next  day,  when  Fluff  saw  the  buck- 
board  he  went  into  his  kennel,  and  they  couldn't 
pry  him  out  with  the  hoe-handle.  He  connect- 
ed buckboards  and  guns  in  his  mind,  so  Brown- 
lee borrowed  the  butcher's  delivery  wagon,  and 
they  drove  to  Wild  Lake.  It  was  seven  miles, 


THE    EDUCATION    OF    FLUFF  17 

but  Fluff  seemed  more  willing  to  go  in  that 
direction  than  toward  Duck  Lake.  He  did  not 
seem  to  care  to  go  to  Duck  Lake  at  all. 

"  Now,  then,"  said  Brownlee,  "  I'll  show  you 
the  intelligent  way  to  handle  a  dog.  I'll  prove 
to  him  that  he  has  nothing  to  fear,  that  I  am 
his  comrade  and  friend.  And  at  the  same  time," 
he  said,  "  I'll  not  have  him  running  off  home 
and  spoiling  our  day's  sport." 

So  he  took  the  chain  and  fastened  it  around 
his  waist,  and  then  he  sat  down  and  talked  to 
Fluff  like  an  old  friend,  and  got  him  in  a  play- 
ful mood.  Then  he  had  Murchison  get  the 
gun  out  of  the  wagon  and  lay  it  on  the  ground 
about  twenty  feet  off.  It  was  wrapped  in 
brown  paper. 

Brownlee  talked  to  Fluff  and  told  him  what 
fine  sport  duck  hunting  is,  and  then,  as  if  by 
chance,  he  got  on  his  hands  and  knees  and 
crawled  toward  the  gun.  Fluff  hung  back  a 
little,  but  the  chain  just  coaxed  him  a  little,  too, 
and  they  edged  up  to  the  gun,  and  Brownlee 
pretended  to  discover  it  unexpectedly. 


18  THAT    PUP 

"  Well,  well!  "  he  said.  "  What's  this?  " 

Fluff  nosed  up  to  it  and  sniffed  it,  and  then 
went  at  it  as  if  it  was  Massett's  cat.  That 
Brownlee  had  wrapped  a  beefsteak  around  the 
gun,  inside  the  paper,  and  Fluff  tore  off  the 
paper  and  ate  the  steak,  and  Brownlee  winked 
at  Murchison. 

"I  declare,"  he  said,  "if  here  isn't  a  gun! 
Look  at  this,  Fluff — a  gun!  Gosh!  but  we  are 
in  luck!" 

Would  you  believe  it,  that  dog  sniffed  at  the 
gun,  and  did  not  fear  it  in  the  least?  You 
could  have  hit  him  on  the  head  with  it  and 
he  would  not  have  minded  it.  He  never  did 
mind  being  hit  with  small  things  like  guns  and 
ax  handles. 

Brownlee  got  up  and  stood  erect. 

"You  see!"  he  said  proudly.  "All  a  man 
needs  with  a  dog  like  this  is  intelligence.  A 
dog  is  like  a  horse.  He  wants  his  reason  ap- 
pealed to.  Now,  if  I  fire  the  gun,  he  may  be 
a  little  startled,  but  I  have  created  a  faith  in 
me  in  him.  He  knows  there  is  nothing  danger- 


THE    EDUCATION   OF   FLUFF  19 

ous  in  a  gun  as  a  gun.  He  knows  I  am  not 
afraid  of  it,  so  he  is  not  afraid.  He  realizes 
that  we  are  chained  together,  and  that  proves 
to  him  that  he  need  not  run  unless  I  run.  Now 
watch." 

Brownlee  fired  the  shotgun. 

Instantly  he  started  for  home.  He  did  not 
start  lazily,  like  a  boy  starting  to  the  wood 
pile,  but  went  promptly  and  with  a  dash.  His 
first  jump  was  only  ten  feet,  and  we  heard 
him  grunt  as  he  landed,  but  after  that  he  got 
into  his  stride  and  made  fourteen  feet  each 
jump.  He  was  bent  forward  a  good  deal  in 
the  middle,  where  the  chain  was,  and  in  many 
ways  he  was  not  as  graceful  as  a  professional 
cinder-path  track  runner,  but,  in  running,  the 
main  thing  is  to  cover  the  ground  rapidly. 
Brownlee  did  that. 

Massett  said  it  was  a  bad  start.  He  said  it 
was  all  right  to  start  a  hundred-yard  dash  that 
way,  but  for  a  long-distance  run — a  run  of 
seven  miles  across  country — the  start  was  too 
impetuous;  that  it  showed  a  lack  of  general- 


20  THAT    PUP 

ship,  and  that  when  it  came  to  the  finish  the 
affair  would  be  tame;  but  it  wasn't. 

Brownlee  said  afterwards  that  there  wasn't 
a  tame  moment  in  the  entire  seven  miles.  It 
was  rather  more  wild  than  tame.  He  felt  right 
from  the  start  that  the  finish  would  be  sensa- 
tional, unless  the  chain  cut  him  quite  in  two, 
and  it  didn't.  He  said  that  when  the  chain  had 
cut  as  far  as  his  spinal  column  it  could  go  no 
farther,  and  it  stopped  and  clung  there,  but  it 
was  the  only  thing  that  did  stop,  except  his 
breath.  It  was  several  years  later  that  I  first 
met  Brownlee,  and  he  was  still  breathing  hard, 
like  a  man  who  has  just  been  running  rapidly. 
Brownlee  says  when  he  shuts  his  eyes  his  legs 
still  seem  to  be  going. 

The  first  mile  was  through  underbrush,  and 
that  was  lucky,  for  the  underbrush  removed 
most  of  Brownlee's  clothing,  and  put  him  in 
better  running  weight,  but  at  the  mile  and  a 
quarter  they  struck  the  road.  He  said  at  two 
miles  he  thought  he  might  be  overexercising 
the  dog  and  maybe  he  had  better  stop,  but  the 


THE    EDUCATION   OF   FLUFF  21 

dog  seemed  anxious  to  get  home  so  he  didn't 
stop  there.  He  said  that  at  three  miles  he  was 
sure  the  dog  was  overdoing,  and  that  with  his 
knowledge  of  dogs  he  was  perfectly  able  to 
stop  a  running  dog  in  its  own  length  if  he 
could  speak  to  it,  but  he  couldn't  speak  to  this 
dog  for  two  reasons.  One  was  that  he  couldn't 
overtake  the  dog  and  the  other  was  that  all 
the  speak  was  yanked  out  of  him. 

When  they  reached  five  miles  the  dog  seemed 
to  think  they  were  taking  too  much  time  to  get 
home,  and  let  out  a  few  more  laps  of  speed, 
and  it  was  right  there  that  Brownlee  decided 
that  Fluff  had  some  greyhound  blood  in  him. 

He  said  that  when  they  reached  town  he 
felt  as  if  he  would  have  been  glad  to  stop  at 
his  own  house  and  lie  down  for  awhile,  but 
the  dog  didn't  want  to,  and  so  they  went  on; 
but  that  he  ought  to  be  thankful  that  the  dog 
was  willing  to  stop  at  that  town  at  all.  The 
next  town  was  twelve  miles  farther  on,  and  the 
roads  were  bad.  But  the  dog  turned  into  Mur- 
chison's  yard  and  went  right  into  his  kennel. 


28  THAT    PUP 

When  Murchison  and  Massett  got  home,  an 
hour  or  so  later,  after  driving  the  horse  all  the 
way  at  a  gallop,  they  found  old  Gregg,  the 
carpenter,  prying  the  roof  off  the  kennel.  You 
see,  Murchison  had  knocked  the  rear  out  of  the 
kennel  the  day  before,  and  so  when  the  dog 
aimed  for  the  front  he  went  straight  through, 
and  as  Brownlee  was  built  more  perpendicu- 
lar than  the  dog,  Brownlee  didn't  go  quite 
through.  He  went  in  something  like  doubling 
up  a  dollar  bill  to  put  it  into  a  thimble.  I  don't 
suppose  anyone  would  want  to  double  up  a 
dollar  bill  to  put  it  into  a  thimble,  but  neither 
did  Brownlee  want  to  be  doubled  up  and  put 
into  the  kennel.  It  was  the  dog's  thought.  So 
they  had  to  take  the  kennel  roof  off. 

When  they  got  Brownlee  out  they  laid  him 
on  the  grass,  and  covered  him  up  with  a  porch 
rug,  and  let  him  lie  there  a  couple  of  hours  to 
pant,  for  that  seemed  what  he  wanted  to  do 
just  then.  It  was  the  longest  period  Brownlee 
ever  spent  awake  without  talking  about  dog. 

Murchison  and  Massett  and  old  Gregg  and 


THE    EDUCATION    OF    FLUFF  23 

twenty-six  informal  guests  stood  around  and 
gazed  at  Brownlee  panting.  Presently  Brown- 
lee  was  able  to  gasp  out  a  few  words. 

"  Murchison,"  he  gasped,  "  Murchison,  if 
you  just  had  that  dog  in  Florence — or  wher- 
ever it  is  they  race  dogs — you'd  have  a  for- 
tune." 

He  panted  awhile,  and  then  gasped  out: 

"  He's  a  great  runner;  a  phenomenal  run- 
ner! " 

He  had  to  pant  more,  and  then  he  gasped 
with  pride: 

"  But  I  wasn't  three  feet  behind  him  all  the 
way!" 


II 

GETTING   RID   OF   FLUFF 

So  after  that  Murchison  decided  to  get  rid 
of  Fluff.  He  told  me  that  he  had  never  really 
wanted  a  dog,  anyway,  but  that  when  a  dog 
is  sent,  all  the  way  from  New  York,  anon- 
ymously, with  $2.80  charges  paid,  it  is  hard 
to  cast  the  dog  out  into  the  cold  world  with- 
out giving  it  a  trial.  So  Murchison  tried  the 
dog  for  a  few  more  years,  and  at  last  he  de- 
cided he  would  have  to  get  rid  of  him.  He 
came  over  and  spoke  to  me  about  it,  because 
I  had  just  moved  in  next  door. 

"Do  you  like  dogs?"  he  asked,  and  that 
was  the  first  word  of  conversation  I  ever  had 
with  Murchison.  I  told  him  frankly  that  I  did 
not  like  dogs,  and  that  my  wife  did  not  like 
them,  and  Murchison  seemed  more  pleased 
than  if  I  had  offered  him  a  thousand  dollars. 

24 


GETTING    RID    OF    FLUFF      25 

"  Now,  I  am  glad  of  that,"  he  said,  "  for 
Mrs.  Murchison  and  I  hate  dogs.  If  you  do 
not  like  dogs,  I  will  get  rid  of  Fluff.  I  made 
up  my  mind  several  years  ago  to  get  rid  of 
Fluff,  but  when  I  heard  you  were  going  to 
move  into  this  house,  I  decided  not  to  get  rid 
of  him  until  I  knew  whether  you  liked  dogs 
or  not.  I  told  Mrs.  Murchison  that  if  we  got 
rid  of  Fluff  before  you  came,  and  then  found 
that  you  loved  dogs  and  owned  one,  you  might 
take  our  getting  rid  of  Fluff  as  a  hint  that 
your  dog  was  distasteful  to  us,  and  it  might 
hurt  your  feelings.  And  Mrs.  Murchison  said 
that  if  you  had  a  dog,  your  dog  might  feel 
lonely  in  a  strange  place  and  might  like  to 
have  Fluff  to  play  with  until  your  dog  got 
used  to  the  neighborhood.  So  we  did  not  get 
rid  of  him;  but  if  you  do  not  like  dogs  we  will 
get  rid  of  him  right  away." 

I  told  Murchison  that  I  saw  he  was  the  kind 
of  a  neighbor  a  man  liked  to  have,  and  that 
it  was  kind  of  him  to  offer  to  get  rid  of  Fluff, 
but  that  he  mustn't  do  so  just  on  our  account. 


26  THAT    PUP 

I  said  that  if  he  wanted  to  keep  the  dog,  he 
had  better  do  so. 

"  Now,  that  is  kind  of  you,"  said  Murchison, 
"  but  we  would  really  rather  get  rid  of  him. 
I  decided  several  years  ago  that  I  would  get 
rid  of  him,  but  Brownlee  likes  dogs,  and  took 
an  interest  in  Fluff,  and  wanted  to  make  a  bird 
dog  of  him,  so  we  kept  Fluff  for  his  sake.  But 
now  Brownlee  is  tired  of  making  a  bird  dog 
of  him.  He  says  Fluff  is  too  strong  to  make 
a  good  bird  dog,  and  not  strong  enough  to 
rent  out  as  a  horse,  and  he  is  willing  I  should 
get  rid  of  him.  He  says  he  is  anxious  for  me 
to  get  rid  of  him  as  soon  as  I  can." 

When  I  saw  Fluff  I  agreed  with  Brownlee. 
At  the  first  glance  I  saw  that  Fluff  was  a 
failure  as  a  dog,  and  that  to  make  a  good 
camel  he  needed  a  shorter  neck  and  more  hump, 
but  he  had  the  general  appearance  of  an  ama- 
teur camel.  He  looked  as  if  some  one  who  had 
never  seen  a  dog,  but  had  heard  of  one,  had 
started  out  to  make  a  dog,  and  got  to  thinking 
of  a  camel  every  once  in  a  while,  and  had 


as 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      27 

worked  in  parts  of  what  he  thought  a  camel 
was  like  with  what  he  thought  a  dog  was  like, 
and  then — when  the  job  was  about  done — had 
decided  it  was  a  failure,  and  had  just  finished 
it  up  any  way,  sticking  on  the  meanest  and 
cheapest  hair  he  could  find,  and  getting  most 
of  it  on  wrong  side  to. 

But  the  cheap  hair  did  not  matter  much. 
Murchison  and  Brownlee  showed  me  the  place 
where  Fluff  had  worn  most  of  it  off  the  ridge 
pole  of  his  back  crawling  under  the  porch.  He 
tried  to  show  me  Fluff  that  day,  but  it  was 
so  dark  under  the  porch  that  I  could  not  tell 
which  was  Fluff  and  which  was  simply  under- 
neathness  of  porch.  But  from  what  Brownlee 
told  me  that  day,  I  knew  that  Fluff  had  suf- 
fered a  permanent  dislocation  of  the  spirits. 
He  told  me  he  had  taken  Fluff  out  to  make 
a  duck  dog  of  him,  and  that  all  the  duck  Fluff 
was  interested  in  was  to  duck  when  he  saw  a 
gun,  and  that  after  he  had  heard  a  gun  fired 
once  or  twice  he  had  become  sad  and  dejected, 
and  had  acquired  a  permanently  ingrowing 


28  THAT    PUP 

tail,  and  an  expression  of  face  like  a  coyote, 
but  more  mournful.  He  had  acquired  a  habit 
of  carrying  his  head  down  and  forward,  as  if 
he  was  about  to  lay  it  on  the  headsman's  block, 
and  knew  he  deserved  that  and  more,  and  the 
sooner  it  was  over  the  better.  He  couldn't  even 
scratch  fleas  correctly.  Brownlee  said  that  when 
he  met  a  flea  in  the  road  he  would  not  even 
go  around  it,  but  would  stoop  down  like  a 
camel  to  let  the  flea  get  aboard.  He  was  that 
kind  of  a  dog.  He  was  the  most  discouraged 
dog  I  ever  knew. 

The  next  day  I  was  putting  down  the  car- 
pet in  the  back  bedroom,  when  in  came  Mur- 
chison. 

"  I  came  over  to  speak  to  you  about  Fluff," 
he  said.  "  I  am  afraid  he  must  have  annoyed 
you  last  night.  I  suppose  you  heard  him  howl?  " 

"  Yes,  Murchison,"  I  said,  "  I  did  hear  him. 
I  never  knew  a  dog  could  howl  so  loud  and 
long  as  that.  He  must  have  been  very  ill." 

"  Oh,  no! "  said  Murchison  cheerfully.  "  That 
is  the  way  he  always  howls.  That  is  one  of  the 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      29 

reasons  I  have  decided  to  get  rid  of  Fluff.  But 
it  is  a  great  deal  worse  for  us  than  it  is  for 
you.  The  air  inlet  of  our  furnace  is  at  the  side 
of  the  house  just  where  Fluff  puts  his  head 
when  he  howls,  and  the  register  in  our  room 
is  right  at  the  head  of  our  bed.  So  his  howl 
goes  in  at  the  inlet  and  down  through  the  fur- 
nace and  up  the  furnace  pipes,  and  is  delivered 
right  in  our  room,  just  as  clear  and  strong  as 
if  he  was  in  the  room.  That  is  one  reason  I 
have  fully  decided  to  get  rid  of  Fluff.  It  would 
not  be  so  bad  if  we  had  only  one  register  in 
our  house,  but  we  have  ten,  and  when  Fluff 
howls,  his  voice  is  delivered  by  all  ten  regis- 
ters, so  it  is  just  as  if  we  had  ten  Fluffs  in 
the  house  at  one  time.  And  ten  howls  like 
Fluff's  are  too  much.  Even  Brownlee  says  so." 
I  told  Murchison  that  I  agreed  with  Brown- 
lee  perfectly.  Fluff  had  a  bad  howl.  It  sounded 
as  if  Cruel  Fate,  with  spikes  in  his  shoes,  had 
stepped  on  Fluff's  inmost  soul,  and  then 
jogged  up  and  down  on  the  tenderest  spot, 
and  Fluff  was  trying  to  reproduce  his  feelings 


30  THAT    PUP 

in  vocal  exercises.  It  sounded  like  a  cheap 
phonograph  giving  a  symphony  in  the  key  of 
woe  minor,  with  a  megaphone  attachment  and 
bad  places  in  the  record.  Judging  by  his  voice, 
the  machine  needed  a  new  needle.  But  the 
megaphone  attachment  was  all  right. 

Brownlee — who  knows  all  about  dogs — said 
that  he  knew  what  was  the  matter  with  Fluff. 
He  said  Fluff  had  a  very  high-grade  musical 
temperament,  and  that  he  longed  to  be  the 
Caruso  of  dogs.  He  said  that  he  could  see  that 
all  through  his  bright  and  hopeful  puppyhood 
he  had  looked  forward  to  being  a  great  singer, 
with  a  Wagner  repertoire  and  tremolo  stops 
in  his  song  organ,  and  that  he  had  early  set 
his  aim  at  perfection.  He  said  Fluff  was  that 
kind  of  a  dog,  and  that  when  he  saw  what  his 
voice  had  turned  out  to  be  he  was  dissatisfied, 
and  became  morbid.  He  said  that  any  dog  that 
had  a  voice  like  Fluff's  had  a  right  to  be  dissat- 
isfied with  it — he  would  be  dissatisfied  himself 
with  that  voice.  He  said  he  did  not  wonder 
that  Fluff  slunk  around  all  day,  feeling  he 


He  would  cling  to  that  note 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      31 

was  no  good  on  earth,  and  that  he  could  un- 
derstand that  when  night  came  and  everything 
was  still,  so  that  Fluff  could  judge  of  the 
purity  of  his  tonal  quality  better,  he  would 
pull  out  his  voice,  and  tune  it  up  and  look 
it  over  and  try  it  again,  hoping  it  had  im- 
proved since  he  tried  it  last.  Brownlee  said 
it  never  had  improved,  and  that  was  what 
made  Fluff's  howl  so  mournful.  It  was  full  of 
tears.  He  said  Fluff  would  try  it  at  G  flat 
and  B  flat  and  D  flat,  and  so  on  until  he 
struck  a  note  he  felt  he  was  pretty  good  at, 
and  then  he  would  cling  to  that  note  and  weep 
it  full  of  tears.  He  asked  Murchison  if  he 
hadn't  noticed  that  the  howl  was  sort  of  damp 
and  salty  from  the  tears,  but  Murchison  said 
he  hadn't  noticed  the  dampness.  He  said  it 
probably  got  dried  out  of  the  howl  before  it 
reached  him,  coming  through  the  furnace. 
Then  Brownlee  said  that  if  there  was  only 
some  way  of  regulating  Fluff,  so  that  he  could 
be  turned  on  and  off,  Murchison  would  have 
a  fortune  in  him:  he  could  turn  his  howl  off 


m  THAT    PUP 

when  people  wanted  to  be  cheerful,  and  then, 
when  a  time  of  great  national  woe  occurred, 
Murchison  could  turn  Fluff  on  and  set  him 
going.  He  said  he  never  heard  anything  in  his 
life  that  came  so  near  expressing  in  sound  a 
great  national  woe  as  Fluffs  howl  did.  He 
said  Fluff  might  lack  finish  in  tonal  quality, 
but  that  in  woe  quality  he  was  a  master:  he 
was  stuffed  so  full  of  woe  quality  that  it  oozed 
out  of  his  pores.  He  said  he  always  thought 
what  a  pity  it  was  for  dogs  like  Fluff  that 
people  preferred  cheerful  songs  like  "  Annie 
Rooney  "  and  "  Waltz  me  around  again,  Wil- 
lie "  to  the  nobler  woe  operas.  He  said  he  had 
tried  to  like  good  music  himself,  but  it  was  no 
use :  whenever  he  heard  Fluff  sing,  he  felt  that 
Murchison  ought  to  get  rid  of  Fluff.  Then 
Murchison  said  that  was  just  what  he  was 
going  to  do.  What  he  wanted  to  talk  about 
was  how  to  get  rid  of  Fluff. 

But  I  am  getting  too  far  ahead  of  my  story. 
Whenever  I  get  to  talking  about  the  howl  of 
Fluff,  I  find  I  wander  on  for  hours  at  a  time. 


GETTING   RID    OF   FLUFF     33 

It  takes  hours  of  talk  to  explain  just  what  a 
mean  howl  Fluff  had. 

But  as  I  was  saying,  Murchison  came  over 
while  I  was  putting  down  the  carpet  in  my 
back  bedroom,  and  told  me  he  had  fully  de- 
cided to  get  rid  of  Fluff. 

"  I  have  fully  decided  to  get  rid  of  him,"  he 
said,  "  and  the  only  thing  that  bothers  me  is 
how  to  get  rid  of  him." 

"  Give  him  away,"  I  suggested. 

'  That's  a  good  idea ! "  said  Murchison 
gratefully.  "  That's  the  very  idea  that  occurred 
to  me  when  I  first  thought  of  getting  rid  of 
Fluff.  It  is  an  idea  that  just  matches  Fluff 
all  over.  That  is  just  the  kind  of  dog  Fluff  is. 
If  ever  a  dog  was  made  to  give  away,  Fluff 
was  made  for  it.  The  more  I  think  about  him 
and  look  at  him  and  study  him,  the  surer  I 
am  that  the  only  thing  he  is  good  for  is  to 
give  away." 

Then  he  shook  his  head  and  sighed. 

"  The  only  trouble,"  he  said,  "  is  that  Fluff 
is  the  give-away  kind  of  dog.  That  is  the  only 


34  THAT    PUP 

kind  you  can't  give  away.  There  is  only  one 
time  of  the  year  that  a  person  can  make  pres- 
ents of  things  that  are  good  for  nothing  but  to 
give  away,  and  that  is  at  Christmas.  Now,  I 
might " 

"  Murchison,"  I  said,  laying  my  tack  ham- 
mer on  the  floor  and  standing  up,  "  you  don't 
mean  to  keep  that  infernal,  howling  beast  until 
Christmas,  do  you?  If  you  do,  I  shall  stop 
putting  down  this  carpet.  I  shall  pull  out  the 
tacks  that  are  already  in  and  move  elsewhere. 
Why,  this  is  only  the  first  of  May,  and  if  I 
have  to  sleep — if  I  have  to  keep  awake  every 
night  and  listen  to  that  animated  foghorn  drag 
his  raw  soul  over  the  teeth  of  a  rusty  harrow — 
I  shall  go  crazy.  Can't  you  think  of  some  one 
that  is  going  to  have  a  birthday  sooner  than 
that?" 

"  I  wish  I  could,"  said  Murchison  wistfully, 
"  but  I  can't.  I  want  to  get  rid  of  Fluff,  and 
so  does  Brownlee,  and  so  does  Massett,  but  I 
can't  think  of  a  way  to  get  rid  of  him,  and 
neither  can  they." 


GETTING   RID   OF   FLUFF      35 

"  Murchison,"  I  said,  with  some  asperity,  for 
I  hate  a  man  who  trifles,  "  if  I  really  thought 
you  and  Brownlee  and  Massett  were  as  stupid 
as  all  that,  I  would  be  sorry  I  moved  into  this 
neighborhood,  but  I  don't  believe  it.  I  believe 
you  do  not  mean  to  get  rid  of  Fluff.  I  believe 
you  and  Brownlee  and  Massett  want  to  keep 
him.  If  you  wanted  to  get  rid  of  him,  you 
could  do  it  the  same  way  you  got  him." 

'  That's  an  excellent  idea!  "  exclaimed  Mur- 
chison. "  That  is  one  of  the  best  ideas  I  ever 
heard,  and  I  would  go  and  do  it  if  I  hadn't 
done  it  so  often  already.  As  soon  as  Brownlee 
suggested  that  idea  I  did  it.  I  sent  Fluff  by 
express  to  a  man — to  John  Smith — at  Worces- 
ter, Mass.,  and  when  Fluff  came  back  I  had 
to  pay  $8.55  charges.  But  I  didn't  begrudge 
the  money.  The  trip  did  Fluff  a  world  of  good 
— it  strengthened  his  voice,  and  made  him 
broader-minded.  I  tell  you,"  he  said  enthusias- 
tically, "  there's  nothing  like  travel  for  broad- 
ening the  mind!  Look  at  Fluff!  Maybe  he 
don't  show  it,  but  that  dog's  mind  is  so  broad- 


36  THAT   PUP 

ened  by  travel  that  if  he  was  turned  loose  in 
Alaska  he  would  find  his  way  home.  When  I 
found  his  mind  was  getting  so  tremendously 
broad  I  stopped  sending  him  to  places.  Brown- 
lee — Brownlee  knows  all  about  dogs — said  it 
would  not  hurt  Fluff  a  bit;  he  said  a  dog's 
mind  could  not  get  too  broad,  and  that  as  far 
as  he  was  concerned  he  would  just  like  to  see 
once  how  broad-minded  a  dog  could  become; 
he  would  like  to  have  Fluff  sent  out  by  express 
every  time  he  came  back.  He  told  me  it  was 
an  interesting  experiment — that  so  far  as  he 
knew  it  had  never  been  tried  before — and  that 
the  thing  I  ought  to  do  was  to  keep  Fluff 
traveling  all  the  time.  He  said  that  so  far  as 
he  knew  it  was  the  only  way  to  get  rid  of 
Fluff;  that  some  time  while  he  was  traveling 
around  in  the  express  car  there  might  be  a 
wreck,  and  we  would  be  rid  of  Fluff;  and  if 
there  wasn't  a  wreck,  it  would  be  interesting 
to  see  what  effect  constant  travel  would  have 
on  a  coarse  dog.  He  said  I  might  find  after 
a  year  or  two  that  I  had  the  most  cultured 


GETTING   RID    OF   FLUFF      37 

dog  in  the  United  States.  Brownlee  was  will- 
ing to  have  me  send  Fluff  anywhere.  He  sug- 
gested a  lot  of  good  places  to  send  dogs,  but 
he  didn't  care  enough  about  dog  culture  to  help 
pay  the  express  charges." 

"  I  see,  Murchison,"  I  said  scornfully,  "  I 
see!  You  are  the  kind  of  a  man  who  would 
let  a  little  money  stand  between  you  and  get- 
ting rid  of  a  dog  like  Fluff!  If  I  had  a  dog 
like  Fluff,  nothing  in  the  world  could  prevent 
me  from  getting  rid  of  him.  I  only  wish  he  was 
my  dog." 

"  Take  him! "  said  Murchison  generously; 
"  I  make  you  a  full  and  free  present  of  him. 
You  can  have  that  dog  absolutely  and  wholly. 
He  is  yours." 

"  I  will  take  the  dog,"  I  said  haughtily,  "  not 
because  I  really  want  a  dog,  nor  because  I 
hanker  for  that  particular  dog,  but  because  I 
can  see  that  you  and  Brownlee  and  Massett 
have  been  trifling  with  him.  Bring  him  over 
in  my  yard,  and  I  will  show  you  in  very  short 
measure  how  to  get  rid  of  Fluff." 


88  THAT   PUP 

That  afternoon  both  Brownlee  and  Massett 
called  on  me.  They  came  and  sat  on  my  porch 
steps,  and  Murchison  came  and  sat  with  them, 
and  all  three  sat  and  looked  at  Fluff  and  talked 
him  over.  Every  few  minutes  they  would — 
Brownlee  and  Massett  would — get  up  and 
shake  hands  with  Murchison,  and  congratulate 
him  on  having  gotten  rid  of  Fluff,  and  Mur- 
chison would  blush  modestly  and  say: 

"  Oh,  that  is  nothing!  I  always  knew  I 
would  get  rid  of  him."  And  there  was  the  dog 
not  five  feet  from  them,  tied  to  my  lawn  hy- 
drant. I  watched  and  listened  to  them  until 
I  had  had  enough  of  it,  and  then  I  went  into 
the  house  and  got  my  shotgun.  I  loaded  it 
with  a  good  BB  shell  and  went  out. 

Fluff  saw  me  first.  I  never  saw  a  dog  exhibit 
such  intelligence  as  Fluff  exhibited  right  then. 
I  suppose  travel  had  broadened  him,  and  prob- 
ably the  hydrant  was  old  and  rusted  out,  any- 
way. When  a  man  moves  into  a  house  he  ought 
to  have  all  the  plumbing  attended  to  the  first 
thing.  Any  ordinary,  unbroadened  dog  would 


GETTING   RID    OF   FLUFF     39 

have  lain  down  and  pulled,  but  Fluff  didn't. 
First  he  jumped  six  feet  straight  into  the  air, 
and  that  pulled  the  four  feet  of  hydrant  pipe 
up  by  the  roots,  and  then  he  went  away.  He 
took  the  hydrant  and  the  pipe  with  him,  and 
that  might  have  surprised  me,  but  I  saw  that 
he  did  not  know  where  he  was  going  nor  how 
long  he  would  stay  there  when  he  reached  the 
place,  and  a  dog  can  never  tell  what  will 
come  handy  when  he  is  away  from  home.  A 
hydrant  and  a  piece  of  iron  pipe  might  be 
the  very  thing  he  would  need.  So  he  took 
them  along. 

If  I  had  wanted  a  fountain  in  my  front 
yard,  I  could  not  have  got  one  half  as  quickly 
as  Fluff  furnished  that  one,  and  I  would  never 
have  thought  of  pulling  out  the  hydrant  to 
make  me  one.  Fluff  thought  of  that — at  least 
Brownlee  said  he  thought  of  it — but  I  think 
all  Fluff  wanted  was  to  get  away.  And  he  got 
away,  and  the  fountain  didn't  happen  to  be 
attached  to  the  hydrant,  so  he  left  it  behind. 
If  it  had  been  attached  to  the  hydrant,  he 


40  THAT   PUP 

would  have  taken  it  with  him.  He  was  a  strong 
dog. 

"There!"  said  Brownlee,  when  we  had 
heard  the  pipe  rattle  across  the  Eighth  Street 
bridge — "there  is  intelligence  for  you!  You 
ought  to  be  grateful  to  that  dog  all  your  life. 
You  didn't  know  it  was  against  the  law  to 
discharge  a  gun  in  the  city  limits,  but  Fluff 
did,  and  he  wouldn't  wait  to  see  you  get  into 
trouble.  He  has  heard  us  talking  about  it,  Mur- 
chison.  I  tell  you  travel  has  broadened  that 
dog!  Look  what  he  has  saved  you,"  he  said 
to  me,  "  by  going  away  at  just  the  psycho- 
logical moment.  We  should  have  told  you 
about  not  firing  a  gun  in  the  city  limits.  You 
can't  get  rid  of  Fluff  that  way.  It  is  against 
the  law." 

"Yes,"  said  Massett;  "and  if  you  knew 
Fluff  as  well  as  we  do  you  would  know  that 
he  is  a  dog  you  can't  shoot.  He  is  a  wonder- 
ful dog.  He  knows  all  about  guns.  Brownlee 
tried  to  make  a  duck  dog  out  of  him,  and  took 
him  out  where  the  ducks  were — showed  him 


GETTING   RID   OF   FLUFF      41 

the  ducks — shot  a  gun  at  the  ducks — and  what 
do  you  think  that  dog  learned? " 

"  To  run,"  I  said,  for  I  had  heard  about 
Brownlee  teaching  Fluff  to  retrieve.  Brown- 
lee  blushed. 

"  Yes,"  said  Massett,  "  but  that  wasn't  all. 
It  doesn't  take  intelligence  to  make  a  dog  run 
when  he  sees  a  gun,  but  Fluff  did  not  run  like 
an  ordinary  dog.  He  saw  the  gun  and  he  saw 
the  ducks,  and  he  saw  that  Brownlee  only  shot 
at  ducks  when  they  were  on  the  wing.  And 
he  thought  Brownlee  meant  to  shoot  him,  so 
what  does  he  do?  Stand  still?  No;  he  tries  to 
fly.  Gets  right  up  and  tries  to  fly.  He  thought 
that  was  what  Brownlee  was  trying  to  teach 
him.  He  couldn't  fly,  but  he  did  his  best.  So 
whenever  Fluff  sees  a  gun,  he  is  on  the  wing, 
so  to  speak.  You  noticed  he  was  on  the  wing, 
didn't  you?  " 

I  told  him  I  had  noticed  it.  I  said  that  as 
far  as  I  could  judge,  Fluff  had  a  good  strong 
wing.  I  said  I  didn't  mind  losing  a  little  thing 
like  a  hydrant  and  a  length  or  two  of  pipe, 


42  THAT   PUP 

but  I  was  glad  I  hadn't  fastened  Fluff  to  the 
house — I  always  liked  my  house  to  have  a  cel- 
lar— and  it  would  be  just  like  Fluff  to  stop 
flying  at  some  place  where  there  wasn't  any 
cellar. 

"  Oh,"  said  Massett,  "  he  wouldn't  have  gone 
far  with  the  house.  A  house  is  a  great  deal 
heavier  than  a  hydrant.  He  would  probably 
have  moved  the  house  off  the  foundation  a  lit- 
tle, but,  judging  by  the  direction  Fluff  took, 
the  house  would  have  wedged  between  those 
two  trees,  and  you  would  have  only  lost  a  piece 
of  the  porch,  or  whatever  he  was  tied  to.  But 
the  lesson  is  that  you  must  not  try  to  shoot 
Fluff  unless  you  are  a  good  wing  shot. 
Unless  you  can  shoot  like  Davy  Crock- 
ett, you  would  be  apt  to  wound  Fluff  with- 
out killing  him,  and  then  there  would  be 
trouble!" 

*  Yes,"  said  Murchison,  "  the  Prevention  of 
Cruelty  to  Animals  folks.  There  is  only  one 
way  in  which  a  dog  can  be  killed  according 
to  law  in  this  place,  and  that  is  to  have  the 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      43 

Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals  folks  do 
it.  You  send  them  a  letter  telling  them  you 
have  a  dog  you  want  killed,  and  asking 
them  to  come  and  kill  it.  That  is  according 
to  law." 

"  That,"  I  said  firmly,  "  is  what  I  will  do." 

"  It  won't  do  any  good,"  said  Murchison 
sadly;  "they  never  come.  This  addition  to 
Gallatin  is  too  far  from  their  offices  to  be 
handy,  and  they  never  come.  I  have  eighteen 
deaths  for  Fluff  on  file  at  their  offices  already, 
and  not  one  of  them  has  killed  him.  When  you 
have  had  as  much  experience  with  dogs  as  I 
have  had  you  will  know  that  the  Prevention 
of  Cruelty  to  them  in  this  town  does  not 
include  killing  them  when  they  live  in 
the  suburbs.  The  only  way  a  dog  can  die 
in  the  suburbs  of  Gallatin  is  to  die  of  old 
age." 

"How  old  is  Fluff?"  I  asked. 

"  Fluff  is  a  young  dog,"  said  Brownlee.  "  If 
he  had  an  ordinary  dog  constitution,  he  would 
live  fifteen  years  yet,  but  he  hasn't.  He  has 


44  THAT    PUP 

an  extra  strong  constitution,  and  I  should 
say  he  was  good  for  twenty  years  more.  But 
that  isn't  what  we  came  over  for.  We  came 
over  to  learn  how  you  mean  to  get  rid  of 
Fluff." 

"  Brownlee,"  I  said,  "  I  shall  think  up  some 
way  to  get  rid  of  Fluff.  Getting  rid  of  a  dog 
is  no  task  for  a  mind  like  mine.  But  until  he 
returns  and  gives  me  back  my  hydrant,  I  shall 
do  nothing  further.  I  am  not  going  to  bother 
about  getting  rid  of  a  dog  that  is  not  here 
to  be  got  rid  of." 

By  the  time  Fluff  returned  I  had  thought 
out  a  plan.  Murchison  had  never  paid  the  dog 
tax  on  Fluff,  and  that  was  the  same  as  con- 
demning him  to  death  if  he  was  ever  caught 
outside  of  the  yard,  but  when  he  was  outside  he 
could  not  be  caught.  He  was  a  hasty  mover, 
and  little  things  such  as  closed  gates  never  pre- 
vented him  from  entering  the  yard  when  in 
haste.  When  he  did  not  jump  over  he  could 
get  right  through  a  fence.  But  to  a  man  of 
my  ability  these  things  are  trifles.  I  knew  how 


GETTING   RID    OF   FLUFF      45 

to  get  rid  of  Fluff.  I  knew  how  to  have  him 
caught  in  the  street  without  a  license.  I  chained 
him  there. 

Brownlee  and  Massett  and  Murchison  came 
and  watched  me  do  it.  Our  street  is  not  much 
used,  and  the  big  stake  I  drove  in  the  street 
was  not  much  in  the  way  of  passing  grocery 
delivery  wagons.  I  fastened  Fluff  to  the  stake 
with  a  chain,  and  then  I  wrote  to  the  city  au- 
thorities and  complained.  I  said  there  was  a 
dog  without  a  license  that  was  continually  in 
front  of  my  house,  and  I  wished  it  removed; 
and  a  week  or  so  later  the  dog-catcher  came 
around  and  had  a  look  at  Fluff.  He  walked 
all  around  him  while  Massett  and  Brownlee 
and  Murchison  and  I  leaned  over  our  gates 
and  looked  on.  He  was  not  at  all  what  I  should 
have  expected  a  dog-catcher  to  be,  being  thin 
and  rather  gentlemanly  in  appearance;  and 
after  he  had  looked  Fluff  over  well  he  came 
over  and  spoke  to  me.  He  asked  me  if  Fluff 
was  my  dog.  I  said  he  was. 

"I  see!"  said  the  dog-catcher.  "And  you 


46  THAT    PUP 

want  to  get  rid  of  him.  If  he  was  my  dog,  I 
would  want  to  get  rid  of  him,  too.  I  have  seen 
lots  of  dogs,  but  I  never  saw  one  that  was  like 
this,  and  I  do  not  blame  you  for  wanting  to 
part  with  him.  I  have  had  my  eye  on  him  for 
several  years,  but  this  is  the  first  opportunity 
I  have  had  to  approach  him.  Now,  however, 
he  seems  to  have  broken  all  the  dog  laws.  He 
has  not  secured  a  license,  and  he  is  in  the  pub- 
lic highway.  It  will  be  my  duty  to  take  him 
up  and  gently  chloroform  him  as  soon  as  I 
make  sure  of  one  thing." 

"  Tell  me  what  it  is,"  I  said,  "  and  I  will 
help  you  make  sure  of  it." 

"  Thank  you,"  he  said,  "  but  I  will  attend 
to  it " ;  and  with  that  he  got  on  his  wagon  and 
drove  off.  He  returned  in  about  an  hour. 

"  I  came  back,"  he  said,  "  not  because  my 
legal  duty  compels  me,  but  because  I  knew 
you  would  be  anxious.  If  I  owned  a  dog  like 
that,  I  would  be  anxious,  too.  I  can't  take  that 
dog." 

"  Why  not?  "  we  all  asked. 


The  dog  is  on  your  own  property 


GETTING   RID    OF   FLUFF     47 

"  Because,"  he  said,  "  I  have  been  down  to 
the  city  hall,  and  I  have  looked  up  the  records, 
and  I  find  that  the  streets  of  this  addition  to 
the  city  have  not  been  accepted  by  the  city. 
The  titles  to  the  property  are  so  made  out  that 
until  the  city  legally  accepts  the  streets,  each 
property  owner  owns  to  the  middle  of  the 
street  fronting  his  property.  If  you  will  step 
out  and  look,  you  will  see  that  the  dog  is  on 
your  own  property." 

"  If  that  is  all,"  I  said,  "  I  will  move  the 
stake.  I  will  put  him  on  the  other  side  of  the 
street." 

"  If  you  would  like  him  any  better  there," 
said  the  dog-catcher,  "  you  can  move  him,  but 
it  would  make  no  difference  to  me.  Then  he 
would  be  on  the  private  property  of  the  man 
who  owns  the  property  across  the  street." 

"  But,  my  good  man,"  I  said,  "  how  is  a  man 
to  get  rid  of  a  dog  he  does  not  want? " 

The  dog-catcher  frowned. 

"  That,"  he  said,  "  seems  to  be  one  of  the 
things  our  lawmakers  have  not  thought  of.  But 


48  THAT    PUP 

whatever  you  do,  I  advise  you  to  be  careful. 
Do  not  try  any  underhand  methods,  for  now 
that  my  attention  has  been  called  to  the  dog, 
I  shall  have  to  watch  his  future  and  see  that 
he  is  not  badly  used.  I  am  an  officer  of  the 
Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals  as  well  as 
a  dog-catcher,  and  I  warn  you  to  be  careful 
what  you  do  with  that  dog." 

Then  he  got  on  his  wagon  again  and  drove 
away. 

The  next  morning  I  was  a  nervous  wreck, 
for  Fluff  had  howled  all  night,  and  Murchison 
came  over  soon  after  breakfast.  He  was  accom- 
panied by  Brownlee  and  Massett. 

"  Now,  I  am  the  last  man  in  the  world  to 
do  anything  that  my  neighbors  would  take  of- 
fense at,"  he  said,  as  soon  as  they  were  seated 
on  my  porch,  "  and  Brownlee  and  Massett  love 
dogs  as  few  men  ever  love  them;  but  something 
has  to  be  done  about  Fluff.  The  time  has  come 
when  we  must  sleep  with  our  windows  open, 
and  neither  Massett  nor  Brownlee  nor  I  got 
a  minute  of  sleep  last  night." 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      49 

"  Neither  did  I,"  I  said. 

"  That  is  different  entirely,"  said  Murchison. 
"  Fluff  is  your  dog,  and  if  you  want  to  keep 
a  howling  dog,  you  would  be  inclined  to  put 
up  with  the  howl,  but  we  have  no  interest  in 
the  dog  at  all.  We  do  not  own  him,  and  we 
consider  him  a  nuisance.  We  have  decided  to 
ask  you  to  get  rid  of  him.  It  is  unjust  to  your 
neighbors  to  keep  a  howling  dog.  You  will 
have  to  get  rid  of  Fluff." 

"  Exactly!  "  said  Massett.  "  For  ten  nights 
I  have  not  slept  a  wink,  and  neither  has  Mur- 
chison, nor  has  Brownlee — 

"  Nor  I,"  I  added. 

"Exactly!"  said  Massett.  "And  four  men 
going  without  sleep  for  ten  nights  is  equal  to 
one  man  going  without  sleep  forty  nights, 
which  would  kill  any  man.  Practically,  Fluff 
has  killed  a  man,  and  is  a  murderer,  and  as  you 
are  responsible  for  him,  it  is  the  same  as  if  you 
were  a  murderer  yourself ;  and  as  you  were  one 
of  the  four  who  did  not  sleep,  you  may  also 
be  said  to  have  committed  suicide.  But  we  do 


50  THAT    PUP 

not  mean  to  give  you  into  the  hands  of  the 
law  until  we  have  remonstrated  with  you.  But 
we  feel  deeply,  and  the  more  so  because  you 
could  easily  give  us  some  nights  of  sleep  in 
which  to  recuperate." 

"  If  you  can  tell  me  how,"  I  said,  "  I  will 
gladly  do  it.  I  need  sleep  more  at  this  minute 
than  I  ever  needed  it  in  my  life." 

'  Very  well,"  said  Massett ;  "  just  get  out 
your  shotgun  and  show  it  to  Fluff.  When  he 
sees  the  gun  he  will  run.  He  will  take  wings 
like  a  duck,  and  while  he  is  away  we  can  get 
a  few  nights'  rest.  That  will  be  something.  And 
if  we  are  not  in  good  condition  by  that  time, 
you  can  show  him  the  shotgun  again.  Why! " 
he  exclaimed,  as  he  grew  enthusiastic  over  his 
idea,  "  you  can  keep  Fluff  eternally  on  the 
wing! " 

I  felt  that  I  needed  a  vacation  from  Fluff. 
I  unchained  him  and  went  in  to  get  my  shot- 
gun. Then  I  showed  him  the  shotgun,  and  we 
had  two  good  nights  of  sleep.  After  that,  when- 
ever we  felt  that  we  needed  a  few  nights  in 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      51 

peace,  I  just  showed  Fluff  the  shotgun  and 
he  went  away  on  one  of  his  flying  trips. 

But  it  was  Brownlee — Brownlee  knew  all 
about  dogs — who  first  called  my  attention  to 
what  he  called  the  periodicity  of  Fluff. 

"  Now,  you  would  never  have  noticed  it,"  he 
said  one  day  when  Murchison  and  I  were  sit- 
ting on  my  porch  with  him,  "  but  I  did.  That 
is  because  I  have  studied  dogs.  I  know  all 
about  dogs,  and  I  know  Fluff  can  run.  This 
is  because  he  has  greyhound  blood  in  him.  With 
a  little  wolf.  That  is  why  I  studied  Fluff,  and 
how  I  came  to  notice  that  every  time  you  show 
him  the  shotgun  he  is  gone  just  forty-eight 
hours.  Now,  you  go  and  get  your  shotgun 
and  try  it." 

So  I  tried  it,  and  Fluff  went  away  as  he 
always  did;  and  Brownlee  sat  there  bragging 
about  how  Fluff  could  run,  and  about  how 
wonderful  he  was  himself  to  have  thought  of 
the  periodicity  of  Fluff. 

"  Did  you  see  how  he  went? "  he  asked  en- 
thusiastically. "  That  gait  was  a  thirty-mile-an- 


52  THAT    PUP 

hour  gait.  Why,  that  dog  travels — he  trav- 
els— "  He  took  out  a  piece  of  paper  and  a 
pencil  and  figured  it  out.  "  In  forty-eight 
hours  he  travels  fourteen  hundred  and  forty 
miles!  He  gets  seven  hundred  and  twenty 
miles  from  home !  " 

"  It  doesn't  seem  possible,"  said  Murchison. 

"  No,"  said  Brownlee  frankly,  "  it  doesn't." 
He  went  over  his  figures  again.  "  But  that  is 
figured  correctly,"  he  said.  "  If — but  maybe 
I  did  not  gauge  his  speed  correctly.  And  I 
didn't  allow  for  stopping  to  turn  around  at 
the  end  of  the  out  sprint.  What  we  ought  to 
have  on  that  dog  is  a  pedometer.  If  I  owned 
a  dog  like  that,  the  first  thing  I  would  get 
would  be  a  pedometer." 

I  told  Brownlee  that  if  he  wished  I  would 
give  him  Fluff,  and  he  could  put  a  pedometer, 
or  anything  else,  on  him;  but  Brownlee  re- 
membered he  had  some  work  to  do  and  went 
home. 

But  he  was  right  about  the  periodicity  of 
Fluff.  Almost  on  the  minute  at  the  end  of 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      53 

forty-eight  hours  Fluff  returned,  and  Brown- 
lee  and  Murchison,  who  were  there  to  receive 
him,  were  as  pleased  as  if  Fluff  had  been  going 
away  instead  of  returning. 

"  That  dog,"  said  Brownlee,  "  is  a  wonder- 
ful animal.  If  Sir  Isaac  Newton  had  that  dog, 
he  would  have  proved  something  or  other  of 
universal  value  by  him.  That  dog  is  plumb  full 
of  ratios  and  things,  if  we  only  knew  how  to 
get  them  out  of  him.  I  bet  if  Sir  Isaac  New- 
ton had  had  Fluff  as  long  as  you  have  had  him 
he  would  have  had  a  formula  all  worked  out — 

x-=-y(2  X  z  —  dog)"=2  (4ab  —  3x) 
or  something  of  that  kind,  so  that  anyone  with 
half  a  knowledge  of  algebra  could  figure  out 
the  square  root  of  any  dog  any  time  of  the  day 
or  night.  I  could  get  up  a  Law  of  Dog  my- 
self if  I  had  the  time,  with  a  dog  like  Fluff 
to  work  on.  '  If  one  dog  travels  fourteen  hun- 
dred and  forty  miles  at  the  sight  of  a  gun,  how 
far  would  two  dogs  travel? '  All  that  sort  of 
thing.  Stop!  "  he  ejaculated  suddenly.  "  If  one 
dog  travels  forty-eight  hours  at  the  sight  of 


54  THAT    PUP 

one  gun,  how  far  would  he  travel  at  the  sight 
of  two  guns?  Murchison,"  he  cried  enthusiast- 
ically, "  I've  got  it!  I've  got  the  fundamental 
law  of  periodicity  in  dogs!  Go  get  your  gun," 
he  said  to  me,  "  and  I  will  get  mine." 

He  stopped  at  the  gate  long  enough  to 
say: 

"  I  tell  you,  Murchison,  we  are  on  the  verge 
of  a  mighty  important  discovery — a  mighty 
important  discovery!  If  this  thing  turns  out 
right,  we  will  be  at  the  root  of  all  dog  nature. 
We  will  have  the  great  underlying  law  of 
scared  dogs." 

He  came  back  with  his  shotgun  carefully 
hidden  behind  him,  and  then  he  and  I  showed 
Fluff  the  two  guns  simultaneously.  For  one 
minute  Fluff  was  startled.  Then  he  vanished. 
All  we  saw  of  him  as  he  went  was  the  dust  he 
left  in  his  wake.  Massett  had  come  over  when 
Brownlee  brought  over  his  gun,  and  Murchi- 
son and  I  sat  and  smoked  while  Massett  and 
Erownlee  fought  out  the  periodicity  of  Fluff. 
Brownlee  said  that  for  two  guns  Fluff  would 


How  far  would  he  travel  at  the  sight  of  two  guns? 


GETTING    RID    OF    FLUFF      55 

traverse  the  same  distance  as  for  one,  but  twice 
as  quickly;  but  Massett  said  Brownlee  was 
foolish,  and  that  anyone  who  knew  anything 
about  dogs  would  know  that  no  dog  could  go 
faster  than  Fluff  had  gone  at  the  sight  of  one 
gun.  Massett  said  Fluff  would  travel  at  his 
regular  one-gun  speed,  but  would  travel  a  two- 
gun  distance.  He  said  Fluff  would  not  be  back 
for  ninety-six  hours.  Brownlee  said  he  would 
be  back  in  forty-eight  hours,  but  both  agreed 
that  he  would  travel  twenty-eight  hundred  and 
eighty  miles.  Then  Murchison  went  home  and 
got  a  map,  and  showed  Brownlee  and  Massett 
that  if  Fluff  traveled  fourteen  hundred  miles 
in  the  direction  he  had  started  he  would  have 
to  do  the  last  two  hundred  miles  as  a  swim, 
because  he  would  strike  the  Atlantic  Ocean  at 
the  twelve  hundredth  mile.  But  Brownlee  just 
turned  up  his  nose  and  sneered.  He  said  Fluff 
was  no  fool,  and  that  when  he  reached  the 
coast  he  would  veer  to  the  north  and  travel 
along  the  beach  for  two  hundred  miles  or  so. 
Then  Massett  said  that  he  had  been  thinking 


56  THAT    PUP 

about  Brownlee's  theory,  and  he  knew  no  dog 
could  do  what  Brownlee  said  Fluff  would  do — 
sixty  miles  an  hour.  He  said  he  agreed  that  a 
dog  like  Fluff  could  do  thirty  miles  an  hour 
if  he  did  not  stop  to  howl,  because  his  howl 
represented  about  sixty  horse  power,  but  that 
no  dog  could  ever  do  sixty  miles  an  hour.  Then 
Brownlee  got  mad  and  said  Massett  was  a  born 
idiot,  and  that  Fluff  not  only  could  do  sixty 
miles,  but  he  could  keep  on  increasing  his  speed 
at  the  rate  of  thirty  miles  per  gun  indefinitely. 
Then  they  went  home  mad,  but  they  agreed 
to  be  on  hand  when  Fluff  returned.  But  they 
were  not.  Fluff  came  home  in  twenty-four 
hours,  almost  to  the  minute. 

When  I  went  over  and  told  Brownlee,  he 
wouldn't  believe  it  at  first,  but  when  I  showed 
him  Fluff,  he  cheered  up  and  clapped  me  on 
the  back. 

"  I  tell  you,"  he  exclaimed,  "  we  have  made 
a  great  discovery.  We  have  discovered  the  law 
of  scared  dogs. '  A  dog  is  scared  in  inverse  ratio 
to  the  number  of  guns! '  Now,  it  wouldn't  be 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      57 

fair  to  try  Fluff  again  without  giving  him  a 
breathing  spell,  but  to-morrow  I  will  come 
over,  and  we  will  try  him  with  four  guns.  We 
will  work  this  thing  out  thoroughly,"  he  said, 
"  before  we  write  to  the  Academy  of  Science, 
or  whatever  a  person  would  write  to,  so  that 
there  will  be  no  mistake.  Before  we  give  this 
secret  to  the  world  we  want  to  have  it  complete. 
We  will  try  Fluff  with  any  number  of  guns, 
and  with  pistols  and  rifles,  and  if  we  can  get 
one  we  will  try  him  with  a  cannon.  We  will 
keep  at  it  for  years  and  years.  You  and  I  will 
be  famous." 

I  told  Brownlee  that  if  he  wanted  to  experi- 
ment for  years  with  Fluff  he  could  have  him, 
but  that  all  I  wanted  was  to  get  rid  of  him; 
but  Brownlee  wouldn't  hear  of  that.  He  said 
he  would  buy  Fluff  of  me  if  he  was  rich  enough, 
but  that  Fluff  was  so  valuable  he  couldn't  think 
of  buying  him.  He  would  let  me  keep  him. 
He  said  he  would  be  over  the  next  day  to  try 
Fluff  again. 

So  the  next  day  he  and  Murchison  and  Mas- 


58  THAT    PUP 

sett  came  over  and  held  a  consultation  on  my 
porch  to  decide  how  many  guns  they  would 
toy  on  Fluff.  They  could  not  agree.  Massett 
wanted  to  try  four  guns  and  have  Fluff  ab- 
sent only  half  a  day,  but  Brownlee  wanted  to 
have  me  break  my  shotgun  in  two  and  try 
that  on  Fluff.  He  said  that  according  to  the 
law  of  scared  dogs,  a  half  a  gun,  working  it 
out  by  inverse  ratio,  would  keep  Fluff  away 
for  twice  as  long  as  one  gun,  which  would  be 
ninety-six  hours;  and  while  they  were  arguing 
it  out  Fluff  came  around  the  house  unsuspect- 
ingly and  saw  us  on  the  porch.  He  gave  us 
one  startled  glance  and  started  north  by  north- 
east at  what  Brownlee  said  was  the  most  mar- 
velous rate  of  speed  he  ever  saw.  Then  he  and 
Massett  got  down  off  the  porch  and  looked 
for  guns,  but  there  were  none  in  sight.  There 
wasn't  anything  that  looked  the  least  like  a 
gun.  Not  even  a  broomstick.  Brownlee  said 
he  knew  what  was  the  matter — Fluff  was  hav- 
ing a  little  practice  run  to  keep  in  good  con- 
dition, and  would  be  back  in  a  few  hours; 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      59 

but,  judging  by  the  look  he  gave  us  as  he 
went,  I  thought  he  would  be  gone  longer  than 
that. 

I  could  see  that  Brownlee  was  worried,  and 
as  day  followed  day  without  any  return  of 
Fluff,  Murchison  and  I  tried  to  cheer  him  up, 
showing  him  how  much  better  we  all  slept 
while  Fluff  was  away;  but  it  did  not  cheer 
up  poor  Brownlee.  He  had  set  his  faith  on 
that  dog,  and  the  dog  had  deceived  him.  We 
all  became  anxious  about  Brownlee's  health- 
he  moped  around  so;  and  just  when  we  be- 
gan to  be  afraid  he  was  going  into  a  decline 
he  cheered  up,  and  came  over  as  bright  and 
happy  as  a  man  could  be. 

"  I  told  you  so! "  he  exclaimed  joyfully,  as 
soon  as  he  was  inside  my  gate.  "  And  it  makes 
me  ashamed  of  myself  that  I  didn't  think  of 
it  the  moment  I  saw  Fluff  start  off.  You  will 
never  see  that  dog  again." 

I  told  Brownlee  that  that  was  good  news, 
anyway,  even  if  it  did  upset  his  law  of  scared 
dogs;  but  he  smiled  a  superior  smile. 


60  THAT    PUP 

"Disprove  nothing!"  he  said.  "It  proves 
my  law.  Didn't  I  say  in  the  first  place  that 
the  time  a  dog  would  be  gone  was  in  inverse 
ratio  to  the  number  of  guns?  Well,  the  inverse 
ratio  to  no  guns  is  infinite  time — that  is  how 
long  Fluff  will  be  gone;  that  is  how  long  he 
will  run.  Why,  that  dog  will  never  stop  run- 
ning while  there  is  any  dog  left  in  him. 
He  can't  help  it — it  is  the  law  of  scared 
dogs." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say,"  I  asked  him,  "  that 
that  dog  will  run  on  and  on  forever? " 

"Exactly!"  said  Brownlee  proudly.  "As 
long  as  there  is  a  particle  of  him  left  he  will 
keep  on  running.  That  is  the  law." 

Maybe  Brownlee  was  right.  I  don't  know. 
But  what  I  would  like  to  know  is  the  name 
of  some  one  who  would  like  a  dog  that  looks 
like  Fluff,  and  is  his  size,  and  that  howls  like 
him  and  that  answers  to  his  name.  A  dog  of 
that  kind  returned  to  Murchison's  house  a  long 
time  before  infinity,  and  I  would  like  to  get 
rid  of  him.  Brownlee  says  it  isn't  Fluff;  that 


GETTING   RID    OF    FLUFF      61 

his  law  couldn't  be  wrong,  and  that  this  is 
merely  a  dog  that  resembles  Fluff.  Maybe 
Brownlee  is  right,  but  I  would  like  to  know 
some  one  that  wants  a  dog  with  a  richly  melo- 
dious voice. 


THE   END 


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LIBRARY 

DUE  OCT  2  6  1969 

OCT  1 8  REC'D 


LIBRARY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 

Book  Slip-25m-6,'66(G3855s4)458 


i-6 


N2  477043 

Butler,   E.P. 
That  pup. 


PS3503 

U85 

T53 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


